I think they are somewhere between Santa Barbara and LAX, probably Los Angeles and apparently lost, which is leading to the stress. The wall across the street from them appears to have graffiti though it's too blurry to make out any detail. Over Brendan's shoulder is some kind of brown lattice work thing. I thought it might be elevated light rail tracks at first, but now I just think it's some kind of decorative arbor in a yard. I don't even know if the Los Angeles light rail has any elevated tracks.

Dif clothes from the startline, I was thinking maybe SA without ANY evidence at all?

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I think they are somewhere between Santa Barbara and LAX, probably Los Angeles and apparently lost, which is leading to the stress. The wall across the street from them appears to have graffiti though it's too blurry to make out any detail. Over Brendan's shoulder is some kind of brown lattice work thing. I thought it might be elevated light rail tracks at first, but now I just think it's some kind of decorative arbor in a yard. I don't even know if the Los Angeles light rail has any elevated tracks.

Dif clothes from the startline, I was thinking maybe SA without ANY evidence at all?

I hadn't noticed the clothes. I don't know the look of the trees and neighborhoods in Buenos Aires, Salta or Asuncion, but if I had to pick one, I'd say Buenos Aires, maybe near the cemetary. Without ANY evidence at all. Almost a 100% guess.

It somebody could blow up the photo by several magnitudes with a focus on the license plate, it should be possible to figure up where the license plate on the vehicle in the background is from. If it's California the game over. If it's one from Argentina then it may not be conclusive whether it's Buenos Aires or Salta.

It somebody could blow up the photo by several magnitudes with a focus on the license plate, it should be possible to figure up where the license plate on the vehicle in the background is from. If it's California the game over. If it's one from Argentina then it may not be conclusive whether it's Buenos Aires or Salta.

I tried blowing up one of the photos to see if I could make out the writing on the wall across the street. The resolution of the photo is so bad that it came out all blurry. All I could tell is that it appeared to be graffiti. The graffiti was one reason I thought it was from California, but I guess graffiti is not confined to the US. The license plate of the car across the street is much smaller than the graffiti and would be even more blurry, so I don't hold out much hope of figuring it out that way. Maybe if someone has real sophisticated photo enhancing software. The car next to Rachel would be a better bet, but it doesn't appear she ever moves enough to give us a view of that license plate.

Don't bother, that power of resolution is fictional; all real-life forensic programs are limited by the input (source material).You'd be better off trying to match the lamp light/trashcan or the wall art (it looks too "regular" to be graffiti).

Hold on, the original video is presumably filmed in HD, right? The problem is that one needs to capture similar high resolution caps of the video in order to enhance it and get closer detail. I'm not blaming anyone who's made caps from video since TAR went to HD, but the recording technology most of us have access to is not in HD, but SD, so we're losing a fair amount of date in the signal translation before the images are captured. Of coursem I have no idea whether the online videos from CBS are HD or not, but I doubt anyone else necessarily has the proper eqipment to capture images from the HD feed. (One way to est this is whether there are such things as Blu-Ray video recorders, and as I recall there are not because the media companies are afraid of the quality of copies that can be made that way. Of course one can pay to download HD versions of the episodes, but those things are memory hogs on computers....about 1 GB for a regular episode of TAR.

Don't bother, that power of resolution is fictional; all real-life forensic programs are limited by the input (source material).You'd be better off trying to match the lamp light/trashcan or the wall art (it looks too "regular" to be graffiti).

Thanks for the idea. I used Google Earth and went looking for street scenes that had street lights with trash cans like that. I found a few in Buenos Aires, though most were not like that. I couldn't find any like those in Salta. Actually, it looks like quite a few areas in Salta away from the central commercial area don't have street lights at all. It's probably pretty dark at night. Here's the pictures (not very good ones - everything is in the background or on the edge of the picture) I found in Buenos Aires from looking in the area around Recoletta Cemetary. I'm not really very confident that's where Brendon and Rachel were, since much of that area has tall buildings almost like being in Manhattan. There's lots of trees though and they could have been near one of the hospitals I found in that area.

Hold on, the original video is presumably filmed in HD, right? The problem is that one needs to capture similar high resolution caps of the video in order to enhance it and get closer detail. I'm not blaming anyone who's made caps from video since TAR went to HD, but the recording technology most of us have access to is not in HD, but SD, so we're losing a fair amount of date in the signal translation before the images are captured. Of coursem I have no idea whether the online videos from CBS are HD or not, but I doubt anyone else necessarily has the proper eqipment to capture images from the HD feed. (One way to est this is whether there are such things as Blu-Ray video recorders, and as I recall there are not because the media companies are afraid of the quality of copies that can be made that way. Of course one can pay to download HD versions of the episodes, but those things are memory hogs on computers....about 1 GB for a regular episode of TAR.

Regard locating the clip of Brendon and Rachel.....another way that might help confirm is to look at footage from the show's prior visits to Buenos Aires. I have an mental impression that we've seen other major streets/highways that look similar to the current promo clip but I'll be darned if I can tell you when for sure.

I can recall a visit to Buenos Aires in episode 2 of AR5. Teams went to Recoleta Cemetery (which apparently they visit again in AR20 so seeing familiar sights would be expected). There teams got a DETOUR for Perro (in a large park) or Tango (in a theater somewhere downtown). When finished they took a bus to Invernada for the pit stop. At the beginning of episode 3 teams had to take a bus back to Buenos Aires, then fly to San Carlos de Bariloche. At the end of episode 4 they flew back to Buenos Aires, almost certainly to the Jorge Newberry national airport (airport code AEP). Then teams had to get to the international airport (code EZE).

In AR7 episode 4 teams flew in from Mendoza and got to Tigre. After some tasks in the Tigre area the pit stop was at La Martina Polo Club in Buenos Aires. At the start of episode 5, they flew out to Johannesburg, South Africa.

here's my analysis so far regarding the brenchel screencaps (can't hold it anymore.. >_<, haha )I might be wrong or right, I don't know, but have a look first, this is the closest I can get,

1. I start doing research on the section that you guys haven't mentioned, which is the red paving footpath behind Rachel, and the lamp post looks very similar with the picture that I found, take a look at the comparison :

Yellow: the red paving footpathRed: the little orange rubbish bin attached to the lamp postBlue: The big light bulbs attached to the lamp postGreen: No road marker dashes in the middle of the asphalt

2. I got the picture from someone's blog, who also add some additional info:

Quote

"Looking at the actual construction, they were re-laying the pavements around Cementaria Recoleta during my trip.....that’s a 150mm wide and 300mm deep polymer concrete linear channel, but either the local Knackers have availed themselves of the gratings as part of their weigh-in at the local scrap metal yard, or the pavement crew haven’t realised that there are gratings available to prevent the good citizens of Buenos Aires snapping their ankles when darting across the pavement from the Sheraton to the train station.

This pavement runs through a sort of square-cum-park which features a huge clock tower, once known as the “English Tower” but renamed in the aftermath of the kerfuffle over the Falklands/Malvinas. Verges and lesser-used parts of the park are dressed with an attractive orangey-red loose aggregate which, on closer examination, turns out to be crushed terracotta! How good is that? pavingexpert blog

3. I predict that teams were riding the 18hrs Bus from Salta to BA, and get off at Retiro Bus Station, which the above source refer to Train Station as well. and the paving path strecthed along the street between Retiro to Recoleta, it makes sense if Brenchel were standing there, looks like they walked, because the distance is pretty short...

4. Another thing that I consider to be "something else" is that English Tower could be some sort of Route Info or tasks....

5. Sheraton, I'm pretty sure it's a name of a hotel/accomodation,

If someone wants to do a deeper analysis, you're welcome

« Last Edit: February 02, 2012, 06:59:06 PM by ZouLy »

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Could it possibly be a roadblock?Near the start of the promo (1 second mark), it looks like all the teams?/lots of the teams are riding bikes and are wearing the same shirts (with The Amazing Race logo). Could this be their mode of transport to the starting line?